You know the drought in California is bad when...

I've been a terrible blogger. In my 4th and final semester of nursing school and I have managed to blog a total of 0 times! - Edit: I'm such a bad blogger that I forgot that I had indeed blogged multiple times, like 3!

Nursing school has been a long, terrifying, and wonderful experience, but I can't fuckin wait to finish. I've done better than I thought I would in both clinical and theory classes, but still lack any sort of clinical confidence. I have come to loathe my med-surg rotations. I like to think that its not me, its that I'm always paired with nurses who are burnt out and hate students, but in truth, the more time I spend in the hospital, the less I like it. I have seen so few nurses in the hospital that looked like they actually enjoy their jobs! It's incredibly discouraging for me, I love to love my job! I love feeling competent and capable of helping people to better understand their medical problems, and providing comfort to those that are frightened. As a medical assistant I got to do this every day, as a nursing student, hardly ever. And I don't see many nurses that are doing it either. With 5 patients nurses hardly have time to talk to their patients at all, unless they have a relatively healthy case load, and no total care patients.

There have been some funny moments:

-You know the drought in California is bad when...

              You're patient won't let you get rid of the suction containers full of fluid drained from his chest because he wants to take them home and use the fluid to water his plants! 

-This couldn't have happened after we learned psych content?

               I had a patient with bi-polar disorder which I didn't bother to look up to much about before clinical because, hey, I know what bi-polar disorder is- sometimes you're depressed, sometimes you're really stoked, end of story. Having just gone in depth about bi-polar disorder I had many light bulbs go off when remembering this one patient. Any time I went in to talk to him I couldn't get him to focus on anything. He kept asking me to get him the telephone numbers to car dealerships in San Francisco (far away from us), he was jonesing to by a new Lexus. I would be sitting down charting and all of a sudden I would see a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye, and low and behold it was my patient. Jogging down the halls in his yellow gown, yellow socks, and IV pole- with Cyndi Laupers "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" blasting out of the phone in his pocket. The charge nurse turns to me and says, "isn't that your patient?" and I proceed to follow him around the floor all night with a wheel chair, pleading with him to sit.

I have only 2 weeks left of med surg, and then I have a 5 week rotation in Psych, which should produce some interesting stories. After that, I will be doing my preceptorship in the ICU at a local community hospital. I have had a terrible time of trying to decide where I want to do my preceptorship, I have little desire to work in a hospital after graduation, but I have been told by a few teachers that they think I would do really well in an ICU setting. ICU is very interesting to me, and I have enjoyed all of the day rotations I have been there, but the thought of working in a hospital just sounds so unappealing. I'm considering this my last ditch effort to try to like hospital work. I would love to work for hospice, or for a homeless outreach program, seeing people in the field. Maybe some day...

For now, the ultimate nursing goal, is for me and my fellow nursing friend to open up our own hospice house, our House Of Death we like to call it. It will be out in the woods, and will double as an adoption center for dogs and cats. We will offer palliative medicine, palliative music, and palliative sex. There will be lots of baking.